Distributed control planes have been used in communications networks for some time, gaining on popularity due to increased scalability and resiliency of a distributed management solution over a centralized management solution. In photonic domains, deployment of distributed control plane solution has been slow and initial deployments have only limited functionality. Photonic networks have more complicated topologies when compared to digital networks. A typical digital network assumes non-blocking switching functionality at a node and simple links connecting nodes, which simplifies network topology model and path computation algorithms. Photonic networks, on the contrary, introduce various constraints that complicate both network topology models and path computation. In addition to wavelength blocking on photonic links and wavelength reach, an architecture of a photonic node is custom, each having very unique constraints, such as size and type of digital switching fabric, interconnection between photonic ports and drop side ports or digital fabric, interconnection between photonic ports and photonic fabric, directionality and photonic port blocking, photonic port protection. Digital networks may use the Dijkstra shortest path algorithm to compute end to end path through the network. To compute a path in photonic networks, the Dijkstra algorithm has to be extended to consider unique constraints at each photonic node. Quite simply, it is significantly easier to model a digital network than a photonic network.